Short Wave - Chang'e-5: To The Moon And Back

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

It's been more than 40 years since rocks from the moon have come back to Earth. But in late November, a Chinese craft landed on the moon's surface--it's the country's first mission designed to retrieve samples of the moon's surface. The mission is called Chang'e-5, in honor of the moon goddess. NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel tells us what the mission will tell us about the solar system, and how it foreshadows China's future ambitions on Earth and in space. Email us at [e-mail]. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Shortwave reporter Emily Kwong here. Reporting for duty. With science correspondent Jeff Brumphiel. And today we're coming at you with two tales of the moon. The first is a folk tale thousands of years old. of a young archer who is given a potion of immortality. One day, his wife drank the potion

and floated up to the heavens, accompanied by a jade rabbit, and landed on the moon, forever separated from her love. This is a traditional Chinese story of the moon goddess, and she is honored every mid-autom festival. Her name is Chunga. And it's with that name, Chunga, that China is also writing a new story about itself.

It's a modern, technically advanced, power, and a big part of that story also involves the moon. With a successful launch, the Chang'a 5 probe will be the first space mission to bring back moon rocks in decades left off. So late last month, China landed its first mission designed to return samples from the moon's surface. The mission is called Chong'o 5 in honor of the moon goddess, and scientists all over the world are really excited about this mission because assuming it,

goes well. This will be the first time rocks have come back from the moon in more than 40 years. Which is a huge deal. So today on the show, we're going to talk about China's Chunga 5 mission, what it's doing, what it will tell us about the solar system. And how it foreshadows China's future ambitions on Earth and in space. All right, Jeff. So I was honestly obsessed with the Chunga story when I was a kid. I mean, it's got a... banished goddess on the moon, a tragic love story, we get to eat moon cakes because of this. But why is the moon such a destination for scientists in China right now? Well, in a lot of ways, the moon has become the first stop for a whole bunch of nations

trying to head out into space. Since the turn of the 21st century here, there have been missions from Europe, Japan, India, Israel. But China, above all, is really just killing it on the moon right now. They've sent satellites. Chang'a one successfully launched an open a lunar probe, Chang'er 2. Rovers. The rover named Yu Tuo. China's space program has just landed a probe on the far side of the moon. And now this mission, Changa 5, is really ambitious, much more ambitious than anything they've tried before.

So far, it's going off without a hitch perfectly. And what has made this mission so ambitious? Okay, well, if you remember the Apollo missions that carried astronauts, to the moon. This is basically like a little robotic Apollo. So the spacecraft launched on this huge rocket and it basically is made of two parts. There's the surface module and a lander. So when it reached the moon, the lander separated and dropped to the surface. It scooped up a few pounds of rock and soil and loaded it into the top part of the lander, which then blasted off and rendezvoused again with the service module. Yeah, that's amazing that it's all being done robotically. So where are we

in the mission right now? So at the moment that we're taping, it's collected at samples and return to the service module in orbit, and it's very soon going to be headed back to Earth. The Chinese don't make public their timelines, so it's a little bit of a guessing game, but by the time listeners hear this, there's a good chance it'll be on its way, or depending on when they hear it, it may have even landed. That's expected to happen around December 15th or so. Okay, so let's talk about the science of this. What's so exciting about this mission. Right. So these rocks help us understand the age of different parts of the moon's surface. Now, Chunga Five has landed in an area called Mans Rumker. And this particular area, we think,

was a sea of lava about a billion years ago. That's Brett De Nevi. She's a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. So a billion years ago may sound like a long time to you, Emily, but compared to the age of the solar system, it's actually not. And that's really why these samples are so valuable. It turns out the Apollo missions, which collected most of the moon rocks we have here on Earth, landed in some really old parts of the moon surface, more than 3 billion years old. And there's a few young samples knocking around. There's this giant gap of over half of solar system history,

two billion years of the solar system's history, where we're just kind of connecting the dots. And these samples are right in that gap. that gap where we're missing valuable information about the history of the solar system. Fascinating. But why would collecting samples of moon history tell us anything about solar system history overall? Right, right. So it turns out this is the coolest part. Planetary scientists use moon rocks in this really interesting way. So we all know that there are craters on the moon, right? And if you think about it, the older parts of the moon have more craters. Sure, because they've been whacked with meteorites for longer.

Right, exactly. You know, the longer that surface has been out there, the more meteorites have hit it. But it turns out what you could do, if you can figure out the ages of different parts of the moon, that you can look at other places in the solar system, and you can count craters and compare them to craters on the moon and kind of figure out the rough age. We extrapolate that to Mars, to Mercury, to asteroids. So we're really getting this kind of solar system. and wide picture from it. So you're saying that by figuring out the age of the moon, using these rocks, and then

using craters as a kind of proxy for age, they can extrapolate to the ages of all sorts of different places in the solar system? That's exactly it. So cool. Remember, this whole thing hinges on knowing the ages of different parts of the moon. You can only do that if you can date rock samples from the moon in a lab here on Earth. You can do a lot of scientific work on the surface, but bringing them back to Earth, you have so many amazing facilities that you'd never be able to bring with you to the moon. And that's why this whole mission is so exciting for scientists like De Nevi.

I mean, it's calibrating the moon's age, which then sets the age of the whole inner solar system when you use this crater trick. Now they'll be bringing back the rocks and dating them. to give this critical new information. Is the surface really the age we think it is? Is it way older? Is it way younger? I guess we will find out. So, Jeff, you mentioned earlier that in the last 20 years or so,

China has really been exploring the moon at a rapid pace. Why is that? Yeah. I mean, this really is just an unprecedented pace. And I think this gets into the other reason that China specifically is doing this, which really has a lot more. do with what's going on here on Earth. So the Apollo missions, we were talking about those earlier. Of course, they too were driven by events here on Earth. And I'm thinking about the Cold War.

Sure. The U.S. and USSR were racing to the moon. Right. And then the U.S. planted its flag, which kind of became a symbol of America's can-do tech savvy. Exactly. Exactly. And there's a similar thing going on here with these missions. In fact, Chong-E-5 literally raised a little Chinese flag on the server. and that image has gone around the world. Yeh Kwanji, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, says from China's perspective, these missions sort of portray it the way it wants to be seen, right? They planted the flag and they did it with a robot.

They're powerful, technologically forward. That's a source of national pride, and people are very proud of the achievements that China is making. And it's not just about domestic politics. By promoting space exploration, you are creating. new avenues. In particular, the Changa missions have really opened up collaboration between China and Europe. In fact, the European Space Agency is actually helping the Chinese track this mission, and European scientists have been collaborating on the Changa missions. Hmm. So this is kind of a soft diplomacy, soft power thing.

Yes, that's exactly what it is. I mean, think about how things have been going for China in other realms, right? They've been under scrutiny for human rights abuses, like their treatment. of the Uyghurs, this Muslim minority in the country's northwest. And then Chinese companies like Huawei have been accused of espionage. And, of course, the Trump administration has very directly blamed China for the coronavirus. Everybody knows that there's some, the, the U.S.-China relation is not going too well the States, but space is one way to collaborate each other. Although I should say that NASA rarely collaborates with China on space missions.

There's actually a law here in the U.S. that makes it pretty difficult. So their involvement with Chonga missions has been very, very limited to say the least. That's super interesting. So, Jeff, where is this all headed? Well, Chongu 5 is headed back to Earth soon. Depending on when you listen to this, it may have actually already landed in Inner Mongolia. But, you know, this mission, it could be building something much bigger. Because if China ever wants to send humans to the moon, it's going to be.

need this technology. You don't want to leave the human there wherever, right? So you need to acquire the technology to, you know, land something safely on the moon and launch something from the moon and dock it with something and send it safely back to the Earth. And of course, Changa 5 has already done all that. Ye told me there aren't immediate plans to send Chinese astronauts to the moon, but he thinks in the long term that might be China's goal. Jeff, one last thing I want to ask you, what is the opinion of scientists outside of China about this mission? Are they watching it closely? Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, Brett De Nevi, who you heard from earlier, is super interested. Scientists in Europe are interested. The Chinese researchers will be the ones who analyze these

samples, but in the spirit of scientific openness, Ye tells me that they're planning on publishing. And, you know, I think that data point will be heard around the world by the scientific community. So they are definitely super interested in Chongah 5. Jeff Brumfield, thank you so much for coming on Shortwave. We appreciate you. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure, Emily. This episode was edited by Giselle Grayson, fact-checked by Ariel Elizabeth, and produced by Thomas Liu. The audio engineer for this episode was Josh Newell.

I'm Emily Kwong, and this is Shortwave from NPR. Thank you.